DC's Monuments & Landmarks

The LBJ Memorial is on the Virginia bank of the Potomac with views of Washington DC’s monuments across the river. It’s dedicated to the 36th president who occupied the White House during the tumultuous 1960s.

At the heart of the Iwo Jima Memorial (or the Marine Corps War Memorial) is a massive bronze statue based on an iconic World War II photo of the Marines planting the flag at Iwo Jima. The Memorial is next to Arlington National Cemetery on a hill overlooking the National Mall.

Mr Republican has his own Carillon. Senator Robert Taft had a long political career and had connections–he was a former Speaker and was President William Howard Taft’s oldest son–but the arch conservative is best remembered as an leading opponent of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

It’s entirely appropriate that the memorial dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt is a little unkempt. America’s 26th president was famously a champion of the environment and an avid hunter and outdoorsman. But his memorial isn’t well known.

The First Division Monument, standing in President’s Park next to the White House and in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, is dedicated to those who served and died in the First Division of the American Expeditionary Forces.

The John Ericsson Memorial is tucked away down on the bank of the Potomac, not far from the Lincoln Memorial. It commemorates the inventor of the USS Monitor, a technological breakthrough during the Civil War.

Sitting across the street from the US Capitol Building, the Supreme Court houses the judicial branch of the United States federal government. It’s in an appropriately grand building built in the mid-1930s and fronted by imposing classical marble columns.

The National Arboretum makes for a pleasant park, but its official mission is education and research. With 446 acres and 9.5 miles of meandering roads, it’s laid out as a very large park with paddocks, forested areas, ponds, and groves, lots of groves.

It’s not just any old train station that can be the venue for a black-tie presidential inaugural ball. But the lavish Union Station, not far from the US Capitol Building, is one of the few that does. It’s an impressive blend of form and function.

The U.S. Capitol Building is one of Washington DC’s most distinctive buildings. In fact, you’d be surprised how many tourists find the building so recognizable and in such a conspicuous location that they assume it must be the White House.

For what is really just a big, stone tower you’d expect the Washington Monument to be a boring thing to take photos of. But this isn’t just any old tower and happens to be near some of the world’s great landmarks, making for a bunch of ways and vantage points to get some interesting shots.

The Einstein Memorial, featuring a 21-foot, stylized bronze statue of physicist Albert Einstein, sits in a grove of holly and elm trees on the Constitution Avenue side of the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences.

The World War I Memorial near the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool isn’t well known or much visited. It has been neglected and forgotten for decades but in the past few years has gotten some long-overdue attention.

The Korean War Veterans Memorial, unveiled in 1992, consists of several elements designed by different people and groups. It has a triangular footprint with the main elements being “The Column” consisting of 19 stainless steel solders, each over 7 feet tall.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall near the Lincoln Memorial memorializes Americans who served and died in the Vietnam War. The reflective wall, in particular, offers some interesting photo opportunities.

Arlington National Cemetery is probably the most famous cemetery in the United States. Directly across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial, and connected by Memorial Bridge, it occupies a 624-acre site next to the Pentagon.

The Lincoln Memorial is one of the grandest and most distinctive of Washington’s monuments. Anchoring the western end of the National Mall and framed by the Reflecting Pool, it’s an outsized tribute to an American president who played an outsized role in America’s history: Abraham Lincoln.

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